I am living in what I am calling the “land of AND YET.
There is nothing that I need.
There is nothing that I really want.
I have no goals. Nothing that I really want to achieve.
AND YET.
I am of an age. I do not consider myself old, though I tease about it. I certainly am no longer young.
AND YET.
There is nothing broken that I feel a need to fix. I really have no problems per se. I do not worry. I experience little fear and no anxiety. I would not say I have a charmed life. I am frequently charmed by life, however.
AND YET.
The man of my dreams is no longer alive. And so, I am a widower once again. I am alone though rarely lonely. I have a couple friends who have full lives in addition to their relationship with me. I celebrate that. I celebrate them. I celebrate the time we do get to share.
AND YET.
I am surprised that with all the contentment that I just laid out there is a very slight and subtle dissonance in my daily experience of me. There is an unresolved chord though I sense nothing in need of resolution. I feel a soft murkiness just below the surface. Murky, yet not dark. It is just barely moving. Not yet discomfort. The easiest of unease.
I never expected to be where I am. With this set of circumstances. With all this open, peaceful spaciousness. Yet open and spacious because loss has left its emptiness. Yesterday is radically gone. In today there is potential, yet that possibility is hazy and unclear.
AND YET.
I am literally smiling as I seek to put my internal experiences into words that may somehow land in another’s heart. A heart that might feel a tinge of resonance. Familiarity. A me too of now or maybe someday.
AND YET.
Being so blind slighted by yesterday has not shut me down. It has not walled me in. I am not braced against the future the way the bruised so often are. I am open. I do not miss the miraculous quality of finding myself open when it was openness that left parts of me in tatters.
AND YET.
With every comfort handled and with an untroubled mind and unshielded heart I sincerely have no idea what is next. That hint of dissonance is the awareness that I am not finished yet, though I haven’t a clue what is left to fulfill. What is still undone. What is yet an unformed goal. It is not disturbing yet it is calling for attention. It is a beginning ripple in a mostly quiet sea. A mostly quiet sea of me.
AND YET.
And so, I watch and I wait and I listen and I trust. I make no demand on the places of not yet. In the spaces of AND YET. I do not push on the tenderness of what is yet to be.
I am grateful to have the capacity to hold contentment with what is and the movement of what may be seeking to be. I have little if any push or force left. I have learned and honor the futility of that. I have a whole lot of” let.” It serves me well.
I am still alive which is direct evidence I am not yet done. AND YET I am not clear what may be next. I hold that unknown in peace. Or better yet I and my unknown are held in peace. I choose that peace. I court that. I allow that.
I reside with grief in a grateful state of being. I am not naive enough to think that I cannot be knocked down again. It has happened so many times. In so many ways.
AND YET.
I know that when it happens, I have the power within me to get back up and keep moving on. I have nothing left to lose in a very real way. It is directly connected to my contentment. To my trust. To my abiding faith that I can handle any yet.
And so, I am dwelling in what I call the “land of AND YET.” It could as easily be called the “land of BOTH AND.” The real estate is pricy, yet the views are beautiful. Clear. Uncluttered. Unobstructed. And they are earned. Paid in earnest. Every fall met with a rise. A choice to rise. A prayer to rise.
A daily prayer of AND YET.
